to him not to desert me and let a woman take him from me.  I thought of the old days when he and I had been all in all to each other, and I hated the woman who had come between us, who had lured me from him, who had lured him from me.  Then as against my misery, she stood out so bold and good, so wholly fair, that I cursed Tim for taking her from me.  I wanted to see him in the full heat of my anger to tell him to his face how he had served me; to stand before him an accuser till he slunk from me and left me alone, as I would be alone from now to the end.

So I had quickened my pace, hobbling up the starlit road to the school-house.  There I was driven by sheer exhaustion to the shelter of the doorway, and in the narrow refuge I huddled, waiting and listening.  The keen wind found me out and seemed to take joy in rushing in on me in biting gusts and then whirling away over the flat.  By and by it brought me the rollicking air my brother whistled, and then came the sound of foot-falls.  In a moment he would be passing, and I arose, intending to hail him.  It was easy enough when I heard only his whistling to picture myself confrating him in anger, but now that in the starlight I could see his dark form coming nearer and nearer; now that he had broken into a snatch of a song we had often sung together, my courage failed me and I slunk farther into my retreat.

So Tim passed me.  He went on toward the village, singing cheerfully for company’s sake, and I stood alone, in the shadow of the school-house woods, listening.  His song died away.  I fancied I heard the beat of his stick on the bridge; then there was silence.

I turned.  Through the pines on the eastward ridge the moon was climbing, and now the white road stretched away before me.  It was the road to her house.  The light that gleamed at the head of the hill was her light, and many a night in this same spot I had stopped to take a last look at it.  It used to wink so softly to me as I waved a hand in good-night.  Now it seemed to leer.  The friendly beacon on the hill had become a wrecker’s lantern.  A battered hulk of a man, here I was, stranded by the school-house.  As the ship on the beach pounds helplessly to and fro, now trying to drive itself farther into its prison, now struggling to break the chains that hold it, so tossed about my love and anger, I turned my face now toward the hill, now toward the village.  The same impulse that caused me to draw into the darkness of the doorway instead of facing Tim made it impossible for me to follow him home.  Angry though I was, I wanted no quarrel, yet I feared to meet him lest my temper should burst its bounds.  But I had a bitter wind to deal with, too, and if I could not go home, neither could I stand longer in the road, turning in my quandary from the beacon on the hill, where she was, to the light that gleamed in our window in the village, where he was.